Facing our spending habits and other financial decisions after they’ve already been made can be incredibly stressful and can even be depressing, and many people find it hard to even acknowledge their financial situation, let alone try to improve or change it.
One of the biggest issues with handling any financial business, particularly when it’s personal, is dealing with the overwhelming reality of all these important and immovable aspects of life.
This is why budgeting is such an important tool, regardless of whether you’re already financially stable, are struggling financially, or want to change your lifestyle for the better.
It doesn’t matter who you ask, when it comes to financial planning and management, budgeting is the first and most important tool in your arsenal, and almost everyone will advise you to make an accurate and specific budget breakdown of your monthly expenses and income to give you a total and clear picture of your real situation.
Being able to actually see your finances down on paper can be absolutely terrifying for people, or simply too boring to face, but having a clear and objective understanding of your situation is the only way to actually address any issues and work out strategies to save money and change your life.
The truth is that many people look down on budgeting and see it as something that only people struggling with poverty use, but the truth is budgeting has a tonne of benefits for you, and not all of them affect your finances.
Being able to budget effectively can have a hugely positive effect on your life and far-reaching effects on you and the people around you or who rely on you, which is why it’s so important to use budgeting properly.
Still not convinced?
Well, read on, because in this guide we’re going to highlight 10 of the absolute best benefits to start budgeting or to take it more seriously, looking at everything from how this can impact your financial life, to the personal and even health benefits this type of organization can provide you with.
Simplify Your Financial Situation
The first and most important benefit of taking budgeting seriously is that it simplifies your situation and makes everything much clearer.
Whether you’re in a tough financial situation or are looking to make some lifestyle changes, having a clearer picture of your finances is great as it allows you to make a more concrete plan and avoid mistakes or oversights that are all too common for people who don’t budget effectively.
Trying to manage various bills, debts sources of income can be incredibly difficult to manage and make the act of budgeting itself feel oppressive.
Simplifying your payments and your understanding of your income and outgoings allows you to take control and become proactive in your financial life instead of just winging it.
This is hugely beneficial for people who are struggling financially and who need to find money to save or ways to trim down their outgoings but it’s also great for people who are financially stable but want to save harder or more conscientiously.
There are many ways to go about this, one of the most popular being to set up a simple Excel document or Google Sheet laying out all your financials so that you can actually see them down on paper and easily update and monitor them.
It’s super convenient and is arguably the most important benefit of budgeting, and it plays a huge part in some of the other benefits we’re going to touch on later on.
Financial Security and Responsibility
Regardless of your situation, budgeting is one of the most effective tools for gaining or pursuing financial security and is an integral part of becoming financially responsible.
The great thing about budgeting is that it doesn’t have to be complex or expensive, and there are tonnes of great resources and advice available here and elsewhere to help get you to where you want to be.
Financial security doesn’t come without work for most people and being able to monitor your income and outgoings to find ways of carving out more savings or disposable income is the first step towards gaining or maintaining financial freedom and security.
While advisors and accountants are great, they can be expensive and most people simply don’t have the means to seek professional advice, and generally, the first piece of advice you’ll get is to start budgeting yesterday!
Really, budgeting comes down to taking responsibility for your finances, and while it can be hard to face up to this sometimes (no one likes seeing how much they spent on takeout or beers, I assure you!) it’s a big part of overcoming issues or reaching your financial goals.
The end result of consistent and well-organized budgeting will be that you can eventually find financial stability, and for most people in an increasingly harsh financial world, this is a massive milestone in life that can lead to huge benefits to other aspects of your health and quality of life, but we’ll touch on these some more later.
Reduce Stress
Speaking about the benefits of budgeting can often lead to a focus on the purely financial benefits that it offers you, which often leads to people forgetting what financial responsibility is really all about!
Getting control of your finances, even if it’s knowing the cold hard reality of them, is often a huge relief for a lot of people.
A lot of people would rather live with the fear of something than face it, but when it comes to finances this sort of fear can eat away at you and affect everything from your sleep to your appetite and mood.
Stress is a huge cause of all sorts of physical and mental illnesses, and the hormones that are caused by stress are proven to have all kinds of negative effects on your health if you are continually dealing with them.
Budgeting will allow you to massively reduce your stress levels and start actually solving the problem instead of ignoring it, and this will almost always have a hugely positive effect on your life, both in terms of your finances, and more importantly, your overall health.
Just knowing you’ve been proactive in dealing with your financial responsibilities is a huge relief for a lot of people, and often budgeting will have an immediate and tangible effect on your financial health which has massive positive knock-on effects on other aspects of your life.
Improved Quality of Life
Budgeting is a great way to start improving your quality of life. Whether you’re saving up for something medical, like dental work, or if you’re really in need of a new car, budgeting will get you closer to realizing these needs far more efficiently and quickly than simply saving randomly.
Organizing your financial life will provide you with structure, clarity and simplicity which is really important when it comes to finances, as they can quickly spiral out of control and leave you feeling totally lost.
As we previously mentioned, the benefits of reduced stress alone can be massive, and while these may seem like very small changes, these positive things start to add up and snowball quickly, and just a few months of discipline and organization with your finances will likely be life changing for you as you reap all the different benefits.
Budgeting can make your life more comfortable, more enjoyable, and less daunting as you will be able to take responsibility for yourself and your own needs, as well as the needs of those around you who you love or care for.
Often, improving your own financial life with budgeting will have a massively positive effect on people around you too, which is a seldom talked about benefit.
Reduce Debts
While the lifestyle and personal benefits of budgeting speak for themselves, for people with serious financial issues, budgeting can offer a real lifeline and start to help clear a path out of the darkness that debt often leaves people in.
Being in debt is often crushing and can leave people feeling helpless, having a massive impact on your material quality of life as well as your mental and physical health.
People who are in serious debt also often don’t have a good understanding of how things got so bad, or how to start resolving the situation, which creates a perpetuating cycle of deepening debt that spirals endlessly out of control.
Budgeting is a way to immediately staunch the bleeding and start treating the symptoms and causes of debt and financial instability.
Budgeting can not only help you see what you need to do to get out of debt, but is a great way to motivate yourself, as people can become motivated by seeing their debts decrease and for financial freedom to start becoming a more tangible reality.
Budgeting is also really helpful for finding ways to pay down debts faster, organizing them into easier-to-manage accounts, and can help you maintain a certain quality of life for yourself day to day while chipping away at whatever debt may be affecting you.
Stay Organized
Underpinning all of the major benefits budgeting brings is the organization it offers. Proper organization brings clarity and simplicity to something that can often be confusing, which makes staying on top of your finances much easier.
Whether you’re saving to buy a house, propose to someone, or simply want to find more disposable income to enjoy your life more day to day, budgeting will help you organize things so that you can prioritize whatever is important to you.
Many people who don’t use budgeting underestimate it, and often don’t realize how much better off they could be if they took more proactive care of their finances.
Being aware of your spending habits is also a great way to affect real changes in your personal life, showing you the real costs of your behavior, whether it’s drinking too much, eating out too much or other things that you don’t realize are weighing you down.
Another benefit to being organized is that you are able to resolve any issues that do crop up much more quickly and easily. Whether it’s an unexpected financial burden, such as a medical issue, or a sudden windfall like an inheritance, being organized can make the process of dealing with these financial situations much less stressful and will allow you to deal with them far more efficiently.
Plan For Emergencies
Speaking of emergencies, budgeting is a way to help you plan for them and make them far less devastating than they otherwise would be.
Very few people have the savings required to deal with sudden emergencies whether they be related to health or other important matters.
After setting up a budget, most financial advisors will suggest that you start building up an emergency fund immediately, ideally, an amount of money that can keep you sheltered and fed for at least 3 to 6 months should you lose your job or have to pay a large unexpected bill.
Budgeting can help you start taking proactive steps towards these larger financial goals and also speed up your financial progress, allowing you to reach your goals more efficiently and ultimately improving your life faster than trying to simply wing it.
Save Money
Saving money is something everyone should do. While many people are forced to live paycheck to paycheck due to stagnant wages, inflation, and other larger overarching financial factors, there are also people who simply choose to live paycheck to paycheck or who don’t realize the importance of saving at least some money each month.
Budgeting will help you to start saving, even if it’s a modest amount, and you’d be surprised how quickly savings can build up.
Using the right approach saving money doesn’t even need to have a big impact on your day to day life, as budgeting will allow you to find money and expenses that are extraneous or otherwise unnecessary and reallocate this money to savings which can be used for anything such as emergencies, a house or whatever else you end up needing in the future.
It’s a cliche, but failing to plan is planning to fail, and in life and finances, this is something that too many people overlook.
Budgeting is the foundation of saving money, and makes saving way more efficient, helping you to clean up sloppy spending habits and providing yourself with a level of protection and assurance in life that can provide a lot of the larger health and personal benefits we listed above.
Set and Achieve Goals
Budgeting can even help you to set goals for yourself and can be a huge source of motivation for a lot of people afraid to face their financial reality.
Whether you’re focusing on paying down debts or hoping to own a home one day, budgeting will help you to actually see your progress and will keep consistently building towards whatever your priority is in life.
For most people, financial improvements are painfully slow, and it can take years to get out of a hole or summit a savings mountain, but chipping away at these by using budgeting is incredibly important for helping you stay motivated and actually staying on the right track once you’ve started down it.
Many people who save money without budgeting or organizing their financial life are at risk of falling into bad habits or wasting both time and money fruitlessly. Budgeting helps you avoid all of this, and encourages you to stay focused on what’s important to you, as well as being thankful for what you have.
Avoid Bad Habits
Finally, budgeting can be really important for people who need to work on squashing bad financial habits. Make no mistake, almost everyone has them, whether it be gambling, binge drinking, or spending too much money on video games, everyone has something in their life they can’t help but pour obscene amounts of money into.
Being able to actually see your expenditures in black and white, and understanding how much better off you’d be allocating those funds to something more constructive is an incredibly powerful tool, and budgeting helps make this crystal clear.
While it’s not a miracle cure for all of life’s ills, budgeting is the calling card of almost all successful people and even if you’re at the start of your financial life or trying to get back in control of it, budgeting is the best place to start and will make the whole process much easier for you.
Final Thoughts
If you’re not convinced by now that you should consider starting a budget, there’s not a lot else we can say. The benefits speak for themselves, as budgeting can have far-reaching effects on your lifestyle and future as well as your health.
It’s easy to get started and often leads to surprisingly fast results when used correctly and can be tailored easily to your own circumstances.
It’s not something just for people who are struggling and can help even the most financially stable people find ways to maximize their efficiency and stay one step ahead of life’s trials and tribulations.
Hi, my name is Deborah White, and I love to save money where possible. I will be the first person to admit that I am frugal, but when you have three children and two low income salaries, saving money makes all the difference. This is why I decided to set up this site, to help others save money too.
